[Python-ideas] FW: Idea: Compressing the stack on the fly

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 5:03 PM, Joshua Landau <joshua at landau.ws> wrote:
> On 12 September 2013 07:59, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>> On 12.09.2013 06:29, Joshua Landau wrote:
>>> Does anyone actually write recursive Python code where the recursion
>>> in a significant bottleneck? The only such code I can think of is
>>> either for a tree, in which case stack depth is irrelevant, or bad
>>> code.
>>
>> Any kind of backtracking algorithm will need recursion or a separate
>> stack data structure to keep track of the various decisions made
>> up to a certain point on the path.
>>
>> The C stack is rather limited in size, so a recursive parser can
>> easily blow up if it uses the C stack alone for managing
>> backtracking.
>
> What sort of algorithm would backtrack that many times? I doubt a
> parser would and I can't think of anything worse ATM.

Solve chess.

ChrisA